Obama’s “Safe Zone” In Syria Will Inflame The War Zonehttp://veracityvoice.com/?p=22082
2015-08-02T10:18:34Z

The road to war is paved with a thousand lies. A fresh fib was tossed on the lie-cluttered warpath to Syria, when it was announced that the U.S. and Turkey would create a “safe zone” inside of Syria — supposedly to be aimed against ISIS.

This “safe zone” is a major escalation of war, but it was described in soft tones by the media, sounding almost cuddly. In reality, however, a “safe zone” is a “no-fly zone,” meaning that a nation is planning to implement military air superiority inside the boundaries of another nation. It’s long recognized by the international community and U.S. military personnel as a major act of war. In a war zone an area is made “safe” by destroying anything in it or around that appears threatening.

Turkey has been demanding this no-fly zone from Obama since the Syrian war started. It’s been discussed throughout the conflict and even in recent months, though the intended goal was always the Syrian government.

And suddenly the no-fly zone is happening — right where Turkey always wanted it — but it’s being labeled an “anti-ISIS” safe zone, instead of its proper name: “Anti Kurdish and anti-Syrian government” safe zone.

The U.S. media swallowed the name change without blinking, but many international media outlets knew better.

“…[the safe zone] marks a breakthrough for Turkey in its confrontation with the Bashar al-Assad government in Syria. If the no-fly zone does come into being it will be a body blow for Assad and his supporters”

Even U.S. media outlets acknowledged that the primary goal of Obama’s safe zone ally, Turkey, was defeating the Kurdish fighters and the Syrian government, both of whom have been the most effective fighters against ISIS.

Syrian regime change is also the goal of the ground troops who will be filling the void left by ISIS, who The New York Times labeled “relatively moderate Syrian insurgents,” a telling euphemism.

“…both the Turks and the Syrian insurgents see defeating President Bashar al-Assad of Syria as their first priority…”

If the Syrian government wasn’t the target of the safe zone, then Syrian government troops would be the ones to control the safe zone post ISIS, as they did before ISIS. And if regime change wasn’t the target, then the Syrian government would have been consulted and coordinated with to attack ISIS, since Syria is involved with heavy fighting against ISIS in the same region that the safe zone is being carved out.

These steps weren’t taken because the “safe zone” plan is much bigger than ISIS.

Obama hasn’t detailed who the “relatively moderate” fighters are that will control the safe zone, but it’s easy to guess. We only have to look at the Syrian rebels on the ground who are effective fighters and control nearby territory.

The most powerful non-ISIS group in the region recently re-branded itself as the “Conquest Army,”a coalition of Islamic extremists led by Jabhat al-Nusra — the official al-Qaeda affiliate — and the group Ahrar al-Sham, whose leader previously stated that his group was “the real al Qaeda.” The Conquest Army actively coordinates with Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and is also populated with U.S.-trained fighters.

These groups share the ideology and tactics of ISIS, the only difference being their willingness to work with the United States and Turkey. It’s entirely likely that once the “safe zone” operation starts, many ISIS troops will simply change shirts and join Jabhat al-Nusra, since there is no principled difference.

Obama knows that the foreign ground troops controlling the “safe zone” are targeting the Syrian government; consequently, U.S. military planes will be acting as the de-facto air force for Al-Qaeda against the Syrian government.

Thus, direct military confrontation with the Syrian government is inevitable. President Assad is already attacking ISIS in the area that the U.S.-Turkey alliance wants to make “safe” via its coordinated military operation. Syrian fighter jets will eventually be targeted, since the goal is to allow extremist groups a “safe zone” to continue their attacks on the Syrian government after ISIS is dealt with.

“Whatever the goal, the plan [safe zone] will put American and allied warplanes closer than ever to areas that Syrian aircraft regularly bomb, raising the question of what they will do if Syrian warplanes attack their partners [“relatively moderate rebels”] on the ground.”

The answer is obvious: U.S. and Turkish fighter jets will engage with Syrian aircraft, broadening and deepening the war until the intended aim of regime change has been accomplished.

This is exactly how events developed in Libya, when the U.S.-NATO led a “no-fly zone” that was supposedly created to allow a “humanitarian corridor,” but quickly snowballed into its real goal: regime change and assassination of Libya’s president. This epic war crime is still celebrated by Obama and Hillary Clinton as a “victory,” while Libyans drown in the Mediterranean to escape their once-modern but now obliterated country.

If Obama’s goal in Syria was actually defeating ISIS, this could have been achieved at any time, in a matter of weeks. It would simply take a serious and coordinated effort with U.S. regional allies, while coordinating with the non-allies already fighting ISIS: Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah.

If Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Jordan were involved in the fight on ISIS it would be quickly strangled of cash, guns, and troops, and be massively out-powered. War over.

The only reason this hasn’t happened is that the U.S. and its allies have always viewed ISIS as a convenient proxy against Syria, Hezbollah, and Iran, not to mention leverage against the Iran-friendly government of Iraq.

Turkey remains the biggest obstacle to defeating ISIS, since it’s been helping it for years. ISIS has long used the Turkish border to escape Syrian government attacks, seek medical assistance, and get supplies and reinforcements. ISIS is so welcomed inside Turkey that ISIS promotes Turkey on social media as the international transit hub for jihadis wanting to join ISIS. Turkish immigration and customs looks the other way, as does the Turkish border control.

In discussing the “safe zone,” the U.S. media always ignore the concept of national sovereignty — the basis for international law. The boundaries of countries are sacred from the standpoint of international law. The only just war is a defensive one. When one country implements a no-fly zone in another country, national boundaries are violated and international law is broken by an act of war.

The Obama administration is aware of the above dynamics, but has again tossed caution to the wind as he did in 2013, during the ramp up to its aborted bombing campaign against the Syrian government.

A U.S.-Turkish no-fly zone will deepen an already regional war: Iran and Hezbollah have recently ramped up direct support of the Syrian government. As Turkish and the U.S. military enter the war space for the first time, confrontation is inevitable. Confrontation is the plan.

There is NO DOUBT in my mind that the biggest failure in America is the establishment church. It’s a bigger failure than even the federal government. Now that’s saying something.

No people in Church history had been given the rich heritage of the churches of America. The Church of America was birthed by the courage and sacrifice of men such as Jonas Clark, John Peter Muhlenberg, James Caldwell, Joab Houghton, et al. These men stood in the gap and rallied the Christians in Colonial America to dispose of a tyrannical British Crown and to help create a land of liberty such as the world had never before seen.

Alas, the courage of the patriot pastors of Colonial America has been forgotten; their sacrifice wasted. Everything they purchased with their dynamic and powerful preaching has been squandered by generations of gutless, ear-tickling men-pleasers in these entertainment playgrounds known as churches. What a waste!

However, as far gone as we are, if even a significant percentage of the 300,000-plus evangelical churches (not to mention Catholic, Episcopalian, etc.) would stand up NOW and begin sounding the clarion call of national repentance and constitutional liberty, the ship of state could yet be turned around. But there is NO SIGN of that happening. NONE!

What would it take to get the pastors of America to take a stand? One would have thought that expunging prayer and Bible reading from our schools back in 1962 and 1963 would have done it. It didn’t. One would have thought that copying the Nazi playbook for gun control back in 1968 would have done it. It didn’t. One would have thought that legalizing the cold-blooded killing of unborn babies back in 1973 would have done it. It didn’t. One would have thought that beginning the construction of a Police State back in 2001 would have done it. It didn’t. And one would have thought that the legalization of same-sex marriage would have done it. It hasn’t.

At this point, it does seem obvious that the vast majority of pastors in America are content to allow this country to nose-dive into destruction without as much as a whimper. Again, what a waste!

It is one thing to be born in an enslaved country with the weight of the state forbidding public dissent or freedom of assembly, worship, and speech. It is one thing to be born with the shackles of bondage firmly fastened around your neck from the time of your entrance into the world. It is another thing altogether to be born in a land of liberty where one’s ancestors broke the shackles of tyranny at the cost of their very lives–thus allowing us to live in a land where the freedom of dissent, the freedom to elect our civil magistrates, the freedom of speech, assembly, and worship (not to mention the freedom to keep and bear arms) are sacrosanct–only to then turn around and squander our liberty and to allow would-be tyrants to take it from us without a fight. What a waste! What a horrible, terrible, awful waste! And that is exactly what the last few generations of so-called “preachers” have done.

Think what these pussyfooting preachers have lost: they failed to preserve the sanctity of life; they failed to preserve the sanctity of marriage; they failed to preserve the sanctity of the Holy Scriptures; they failed to preserve the sanctity of liberty; they failed to preserve the sanctity of honesty and decency; they even failed to preserve the sanctity of the Church itself.

Truly, “Ichabod” is written over the establishment church in America. And, as a result, “Anathema” is being written over the entire nation. I am convinced that any spiritual renewal that might still come will mostly bypass America’s establishment churches and will be carried by nontraditional, non-aligned, unincorporated, unaffiliated–maybe even underground–fellowships. This is what is currently happening in communist–and other–oppressed countries. And America is fast becoming an oppressed country.

In fact, if the pastors in America had even a fraction of the man-stuff that the pastors in Colonial America had, they, too, would be sounding the clarion call of independence and secession. Like King George’s England, Washington, D.C., has become a corrupt cesspool of wickedness that is using every means possible to wrap its tyrannical tentacles around every State, city, hamlet, and village in the entire country. At some point, the only options freedom-loving people in this country will have are slavery or secession. And that point may come a whole lot sooner than most of us expect.

So, what has happened to the Church? How did our pastors become so timid? How could the direct descendants of the Pilgrims, Puritans, and Patriots become so cowardly? Here are the reasons:

1. The Church, which is the Bride of Christ, entered into an adulterous relationship with Caesar when it put on the state’s official wedding band: otherwise known as the 501c3 non-profit, tax-exempt organization status. At that moment, it became a “creature of the state” and left the sanctity of its spiritual wedding to Christ. That happened in 1954. In just a little over a short half-century later, the Church has lost, not only the virtue of its own spiritual institution, but also the virtue of the most fundamental institution of all: Holy Matrimony.

Yet, instead of sounding forth the message of truth regarding this attack against Western Civilization itself, our pastors stand mute and apathetic, holding onto their precious tax-exempt status with their last waning breath. In practice, our pastors are saying exactly what the Pharisees said in Jesus’ time: “We have no king but Caesar.”

2. The heretical misinterpretation of Romans 13 that teaches Christians must submit to civil government “no-matter-what.”

This fallacious doctrine has damned America. Our pastors and churches are following the Nazi playbook verbatim. True resistance to evil must, by nature, come mostly from spiritual sources, because the battle between good and evil is mostly a spiritual battle. Therefore, it is obligatory that our spiritual leaders be the ones leading this battle. Alas, for the most part, this is not happening.

In the name of Romans 13, our spiritual leaders have abandoned the battlefield. They have sounded retreat. They have waved the white flag. They have capitulated. They have surrendered. And the enemy has taken the field.

I submit that at the judgment bar of God, these squeamish milquetoast preachers are going to have to apologize, not only to Clark, Muhlenberg, Caldwell, and Houghton, but also to every courageous man and woman throughout history. Think of Gideon and Samson and Samuel and David and Vashti and Esther and Daniel and Micaiah and Jeremiah and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Think of Simon Peter and James and John, and even Paul, the man who penned Romans 13. Think of the Anabaptists, the Waldensians, the Protestant Reformers, and the martyrs of the Dark Ages. Think of the Scots and Irishmen and Americans. Think of the persecuted people of Tibet and Burma and Sudan and Saudi Arabia and China and Palestine. Think of the millions of people throughout the centuries who stood against oppressors and tyrants of all stripes and types–be they political, religious, or military–and said, “No!”

Men such as Joel Osteen are Pied Pipers of a sleep-walking church whose music is only serving to march these unsuspecting souls into the gulags of a modern inquisition. Yet, these sycophants lead the largest churches in the country.

“Like priest, like people.” People have heaped to themselves teachers having itching ears. They have sown to the wind, and they are reaping a whirlwind. They are like the Israelites of old who refused to listen to God’s prophets and, instead, gave heed to the hireling-prophets of Ahab.

4. Then, there are the folks who think they must help God fulfill Bible prophecy.

First, there is Mr. Warmonger himself: John Hagee. This man, and thousands like him, have convinced their churches that they must help God establish His Kingdom on the earth. They have appointed themselves judge, jury, and executioner of all things pertaining to the Middle East. Their loyalty does not reside in America; it resides in the modern state of Israel–a nation that has absolutely NOTHING to do with Biblical Israel. Their erroneous interpretation of Genesis 12 has created a climate of war and hatred that is tearing the soul out of America. All of these perpetual wars that are being fomented in the Middle East are done in the name of Genesis 12, in much the same way that our domestic internment is being facilitated in the name of Romans 13.

Folks, God didn’t need anyone’s help when He sent His Son to earth the first time, and He doesn’t need anyone’s help when He decides to send His Son to earth the second time.

Secondly, there are those well-meaning Christians (I think) who actually believe it is their God-ordained duty to do nothing to resist evil.

I received this post on my Facebook page just this week: “None of these things [the evil, calamitous things happening to our country] could have been prevented, nor should they have been. All these things must come to pass before the Lord returns. In this world, nations rise and nations fall, and this one just happens to be falling right now. Praise God! I praise God for the destruction of this evil nation! I wish the Lord would return right now! But unfortunately, he will not return until ‘everything that must happen, has happened.’ The sooner these things happen, the sooner the Lord can return.”

I wonder if this Christian gentleman is going to be praising God when his children or grandchildren are put to the rack or his mother and father are tortured or his wife and sisters are molested and ravaged.

Yes, I realize that our sainted forebears often endured the most hideous treatment with spiritual and moral courage, but no one in their right mind would wish such treatment on their loved ones–especially if they had the power to prevent it. This man rejoices over his country’s destruction? This man is NOT in his right mind. The prophets of old wept over the destruction of their beloved nation. Jesus wept over the impending destruction of the city of Jerusalem.

But this is the kind of rationale one gets from these pastors and churches who use the Scripture to brainwash people into attitudes of fatalism. They are the ones who become nothing more than their own self-fulfilling prophecies. They stand back and do nothing and then claim to praise God when their own indifference grows into their own destruction. Such people are NOT in their right minds.

Famed Nineteenth Century revivalist Charles Finney is widely reported as saying, “If there is a decay of conscience, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the public press lacks moral discernment, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the church is degenerate and worldly, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the world loses its interest in Christianity, the pulpit is responsible for it. If Satan rules in our halls of legislation, the pulpit is responsible for it. If our politics become so corrupt that the very foundations of our government are ready to fall away, the pulpit is responsible for it.”

Amen!

The Church is to blame for legalized abortion on demand; the Church is to blame for the SCOTUS decision to legalize same-sex “marriage”; the Church is to blame for the growing Police State in this country; the Church is to blame for America’s war-mongering abroad; the Church is to blame for the growing influence of false religions in America.

When America is lying in the graveyard of history, the epitaph on its tombstone will read, “Here lies the United States of America: killed by the apathy and indifference of its pastors and churches.”

As I again reflect on the giants who thundered forth liberty from the pulpits of Colonial America, and I see the behavior of so many of our pastors today, I can only repeat: What a waste!

]]>Power-Mad Erdogan Launches War In Attempt To Become Turkey’s Supreme Leaderhttp://veracityvoice.com/?p=22076
2015-08-01T12:28:06Z

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lost his bid to become Turkey’s supreme leader in last month’s elections. So he’s taken the country to war to increase his popularity and improve his chances of victory in snap elections in November.

Turkish bombers continued to pound Kurdish positions in Northern Iraq early Thursday after killing an estimated 100 Kurds a day earlier. Erdogan broke off peace talks with the Kurdish militias and launched this latest assault after failing to win enough seats in Parliament to change the constitution. The ambitious Erdogan needed 330 deputies to make sweeping changes to the constitution that would give the president unlimited executive power making Erdogan de facto emperor of Turkey. His plan was frustrated by the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) that won an unprecedented 13 percent of the vote. The HDP is determined to prevent Erdogan from realizing his dream of becoming Turkey’s imperial sultan . The current war against the Kurds in Syria and Iraq is designed to whip up nationalist sentiment in order to put Erdogan “over the top” in elections that could come as early as this Fall.

Here’s more from Huffington Post:

“Last month, only after losing his party’s parliamentary majority, President Erdogan realized that there are dangerous terrorists in neighboring Syria who are a threat to Turkey’s security … Rather than intending to fight ISIS terrorists or cooperate with United States military operations in Syria and Iraq, Erdogan’s real purpose is to consolidate his own hold on power and accomplish the following self-serving objectives:

1) Turkey’s President realizes that should his ruling party fail to form a coalition government by the end of August, he would be obliged to call a new round of parliamentary elections in November. Therefore, by taking bold actions against ISIS and Kurdish fighters, Erdogan hopes that Turkish voters would give his party the few extra seats needed to regain a majority in Parliament.

…The Turkish President’s self-serving fake war against terrorism could have the tragic consequence of escalating the violence throughout Turkey and neighboring countries. If Ankara is truly interested in countering the Jihadists, it should have done that long ago, instead of arming and abetting ISIS and other terror groups.” (Erdogan Is Pursuing Turkish Self-Interests, Under the Guise of Fighting ISIS, Harut Sassounian, Huffington Post)

Here’s more from Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights, David L. Phillips:

“Erdogan is angling for new elections. He is trying to discredit the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), a pro-Kurdish party which received 13.1% of the votes and will be seated in parliament for the first time. Erdogan is furious with the HDP for its strong showing, which denied the AKP enough support to change the constitution and establish an executive imperial presidency. In retaliation, Erdogan is threatening to lift the parliamentary immunity of HDP legislators. He’s even intimated at closing the HDP for supporting the PKK.” (Turkey’s Dark Future, David L. Phillips, Huffington Post)

Are we saying that Erdogan has started a war with the Kurds with the sole intention of enhancing his own political power?

Yes, that’s exactly what we’re saying. This is a story about a power-hungry megalomaniac, not a struggle against Kurdish militias and certainly not a war against ISIS. In fact, Erdogan has been ISIS greatest friend as this blurb from the UK Independent points out:

“There is no doubt that ability to move backwards and forwards across the 550-mile long Syrian-Turkish border has been crucial to the growth of the jihadi movements in Syria since 2011. The thousands of foreign volunteers who have flooded into Syria have almost all come from Turkey. Even those unable to speak Turkish or Arabic have had little difficulty in making their way across. In many respects, Turkey has provided a safe sanctuary for Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra, playing a similar role as Pakistan does in support of providing safe haven for the Taliban in Afghanistan.” “A Syrian rebel offensive led by Jabhat al-Nusra was allegedly masterminded from an operational headquarters inside Turkey and was the outcome of a closer understanding between Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.” (Suruc suicide attack: Bombing shows Turkey is being sucked into the violence in Syria, Patrick Cockburn, Independent)

And then there’s this from the Front Page:

“Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s claim that “Turkey and AKP governments have never had any direct or indirect connection with any terrorist organization” flies in the face of last November’s report from the U.N. Security Council’s Analytical Support and Monitoring Team, which identifies Turkey as the primary route for weaponry smuggled to ISIL and the Al-Nusrah Front.

The State Department’s briefing at the beginning of June also stated Turkey is the main route for more than 22,000 fighters who have flocked to Syria to join extremist organizations, mainly ISIL. There are numerous other sources” (Turkey into the Abyss, Robert Ellis, Front Page)

Erdogan has pulled out all the stops in his attempt to consolidate his power and become Turkey’s supreme leader, which is why he’s trying to have pro-Kurdish members of parliament (HDP) stripped of immunity and prosecuted as criminals under Turkey’s stringent terrorism laws. (So far, more than 1,300 mostly Kurdish nationalist supporters and leftists have been swept up in a massive government dragnet since the bombing in Suruc two weeks ago. None of these people have yet been charged with a crime. The government has dropped all pretense that it is carrying out a war on ISIS. The roundup is clearly politically motivated.)

In an article that appeared in the Turkish daily, Hurriyet, statistician Emer Deliveli asks “Is Erdogan warmongering for political power?” Here’s what he says:

“After showing that “political stability indicators at an all-time low”, Deliveli says, “my analyses showed that, indeed, support for the AKP (Erdogan’s party) increased after episodes of rising political violence.”… “one cannot prove that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is warmongering for political power … However, both conspiracy theories are in fact variants of the same theme- Erdogan doing all it takes to become an all-powerful president. And when evidence piles up like this, one cannot help but think, “what if.” (Is Erdogan warmongering for political power?, Hurriyet)

Erdogan wouldn’t be the first leader to start a war to boost his popularity at home, or the last. But it’s a risky strategy all the same, especially since his erratic and self-serving policies have already alienated a broad cross-section of the electorate that used to comprise his base. Check out this blurb from Foreign Policy magazine:

“Erdogan’s weakness in perceiving and acting on the militant Islamist threat has not won him extra friends on the security-first right. His autocratic Islamist style is losing him support on the left. And as for the Kurdish vote, well, he can just forget about it. History has also shown that seemingly invincible leaders can be forced to go gently — or not so gently — into that good night. The mighty Ottomans, after all, did not last forever. There’s no reason why a neo-Ottoman would either.” (The Sultan of Swing’s Dangerous Gamble, Leela Jacinto, Foreign Policy)

The biggest threat facing Erdogan in the short-term is that the Turkish people will see what he’s up to and cast their ballots accordingly in the November elections. But that will require restraint on the part of the Kurdish militias who will have to silence their guns to win the support of the people.

The only way the Kurds can beat a power-drunk, right-wing fanatic like Erdogan, is by giving peace a chance. Until the votes are counted, that is.

]]>Who Benefits From The Lifting of Iranian Sanctions?http://veracityvoice.com/?p=22073
2015-07-26T14:48:57Z

With the approval vote in the United Nation Security Council of the P5 + 1 Iranian agreement, a smorgasbord of eager trading partners claw themselves out of the woodwork. The liquid black gold rush is on. With the rescinding of sanctions put into motion, over time the wheels of commerce will be put back on track. No matter what the U.S. Congress does, the flood from international trade will start making deals with Iran.

“Citi Research analyst Chris Wetherbee said the opening of Iran is a “net positive” for international tanker firms, because Iran’s aging fleet won’t be able to compete, and more energy supplies will be on the market.”

“All of the major banking institutions in the industrial world will try to finance and facilitate increased trade with Iran,” Christopher Whalen, senior managing director at Kroll Bond Rating Agency, told CNBC. “It’s a big country, (and) they are very Western-focused. Iranians are consumers of everything. You can anticipate anything from industrial equipment to consumer products will definitely be bought, and will definitely be financed.”

“Lower crude oil prices following the Iran nuclear deal will contribute positively to the Indian economy, across the oil and gas value chain barring domestic upstream players, India Ratings and Research has said.

A decline in oil prices could lower LNG (liquefied natural gas) prices and this is likely to benefit end-consumer industries such as fertilizer and petrochemicals, it said.”

“Now, with the prospect of sanctions on Iran lifting in the near future, Pakistan is hoping to become one of the early beneficiaries of a nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers by finally completing the Iran-Pakistan pipeline.

But funding for the expensive project, expected to cost about $2 billion, is another problem for cash-strapped Pakistan. That is why it is trying to piggyback this project on another one funded mostly by its rich neighbor, China.

China will provide 85 percent of the $2 billion required to build a liquid natural gas terminal at Pakistan’s southern port city Gwadar. The project includes a 700 kilometer long pipeline to other areas of the country.”

“Washington will live to regret this decision as its once greatest allies in the region, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, as well as Egypt and even Turkey, start to feel as though they were betrayed by the United States.

Looking to counter what the Gulf Arabs perceive as a genuine threat, logic dictates they are likely to turn to Russia for a fresh alliance and to help them counter the Iranian threat.”

“Trapped in isolation with outdated planes, Iran Air – a carrier dragged down by decades of economic restrictions – finally felt a gust of hope last week thanks to the international nuclear accord and a potential lifting of sanctions.

Once the deal is implemented, the Islamic republic will be able to replace its vintage aircraft, some of which are almost 30 years old.”

All these examples share in a common interest that comes from commerce. Nonetheless, buying and selling is seldom a strict barter arrangement. The banking system and currency conversion for payment and settlement becomes a necessary component. The lifting of sanctions is really reducible to reestablishing the financial clearing function.

While the creation of the BRICS trading block provides a workable competing opportunity for Iran to engage, the necessity to transact with Western companies becomes obvious.

Replacement of an airline fleet means buying from Western companies like Boeing and Airbus. Hoping that Russia or China would be able to construct an alternative is just not practical.

The Asian ship builders like South Korea may be looking for future tanker orders, since competitive fabrication companies are producing the most functional naval transports.

Finally, the consumer electronic sector sees the Iranian market as a prime target long restricted from all the gadgets that facilitate global communication.

The United States will lag behind most other countries from trading with Iran for a simple reason. Iranian unwelcoming attitudes towards America will translate into doing business with anyone but the Yankee devil, whenever possible.

While Iranian youth may be far more open to reinstituting commercial relations with America, the political regime holds fast to fighting the imperial globalization of Western corporatism.

In order to grease the gears of advantageous international commerce, the energy sector will still lead an Iranian economic reintegration. Marking the difference between mutually beneficial business transactions from corporatist exploration and plunder of natural resources, should be the task for going forward.

Set aside the politics of the neo-feudalism version of 21st colonialism and reopen the prospects of reducing tension and hatred by abolishing sanctions as a destructive tool for foreign policy.

All sincere parties benefit and profit from cordial business relations. Iran’s desire to have sanctions eliminated offers hope that better relationships and positive interaction can progress.

The overwhelming approval of foreign nations to break the embargo of NeoCon “axis of evil” propaganda demonstrates that promoting “good business” is preferable to detrimental isolation and damaging hostilities.

The proper standard to adopt was established by George Washington in his Farewell Address.

“Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations, are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest. But even our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand; neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing; establishing (with powers so disposed, in order to give trade a stable course, to define the rights of our merchants, and to enable the government to support them) conventional rules of intercourse, the best that present circumstances and mutual opinion will permit, but temporary, and liable to be from time to time abandoned or varied, as experience and circumstances shall dictate; constantly keeping in view that it is folly in one nation to look for disinterested favors from another; that it must pay with a portion of its independence for whatever it may accept under that character; that, by such acceptance, it may place itself in the condition of having given equivalents for nominal favors, and yet of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving more. There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion, which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.”

Sanctions violate “conventional rules of intercourse”. International affairs never remain constant. Notwithstanding, the wisdom of President Washington, the current political and economic culture is hell bent on breaking the rules for favorable commerce. Resumed trade with Iran will offer a positive opportunity to lower the antagonistic tension and restart rehabilitative dialogue.

Sartre is the publisher, editor, and writer for Breaking All The Rules. He can be reached at: BATR
Sartre is a regular columnist for Veracity Voice

It is noteworthy that “Srebrenica” in the mainstream media discourse is no longer a geographic location that needs to be preceded by a noun (“the massacre in…”). It has been developed into a stand-alone term that denotes horror, on par with “Auschwitz,” “Katyn,” or “Hiroshima.” In reality, unlike those very real horrors, it is a postmodern myth based on a distortion of facts and their willful omission.

In a Jeffersonian paradigm, two decades later we would have a reasonable, factually based debate on what happened in and around Srebrenica in July 1995, how and why; but the very term “debate” is rejected by an elite class in the West that treats “Srebrenica” as a metaphysical concept. Its luminaries deny as a matter of principle that there is anything to debate. They claim that eight thousand prisoners were executed in cold blood and that a UN-established judicial forum of unquestioned authority has found it to constitute “genocide.”

As it happens, many authoritative and reasonable people with no ethnic, religious or personal axe to grind in the Balkan quagmire disagree. They have spoken and written as if a Jeffersonian debate existed, only to be dismissed as “genocide deniers.”

The fact beyond dispute is that during the Bosnian war thousands of Muslim men were killed in the region of Srebrenica. Most of them died in July of 1995 when the enclave fell almost without a fight to the Bosnian Serb Army and the Muslim garrison—the 28th division of the (Muslim) Bosnia-Herzegovina Army—attempted a breakthrough. A significant number reached safety at the Muslim-held town of Tuzla, 40 miles to the north; some found shelter in Serbia, across the Drina River to the east. An unknown were killed while fighting their way through; and many others—numbers remain disputed—were taken prisoner and executed by the Bosnian Serb army.

The numbers remain unknown and misrepresented. With “8,000 executed” and thousands more killed in the fighting while trying to reach the Muslim lines, the column attempting to break out should have counted 15,000 men—an impossibly large number. There should have been huge gravesites and satellite evidence of executions, burials, and body removals. The UN searches in the Srebrenica vicinity, breathlessly frantic at times, still falls far short of the sanctified figure of 8,000. The Islamic shrine at Potocari, where the supposed victims are buried, includes those of soldiers killed in action and civilians who died of natural causes, Muslim and Serb, between May 1992 and July 1995.

The Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague (ICTY) never came up with a conclusive breakdown of casualties. That a war crime did take place is undeniable: many Muslim prisoners were killed. The number of actual victims remains forensically and demographically unproven. According to the former BBC reporter Jonathan Rooper, “from the outset the numbers were used and abused” for political purposes. The number of likely casualties from all causes corresponds closely to the ‘missing’ list of 7,300 compiled by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Rooper says. But the early estimates were based on nothing more than the simple combination of an estimated 3,000 men last seen at the UN base at Potocari and an estimated 5,000 people reported “to have left the enclave before it fell,” Rooper says:

Perhaps the most startling aspect of the 7-8,000 figure is that it has always been represented as synonymous with the number of people executed. This was never a possibility: numerous contemporary accounts noted that UN and other independent observers had witnessed fierce fighting with significant casualties on both sides. It was also known that others had fled to Muslim-held territory around Tuzla and Zepa, that some had made their way westwards and northwards, and that some had fled into Serbia. It is therefore certain that nowhere near all the missing could have been executed.

The Red Cross reported at the time that some 3,000 Bosnian Army soldiers managed to reach Muslim lines near Tuzla and were redeployed by the Bosnian Army “without their families being informed.” The number of military survivors was also confirmed by Muslim General Enver Hadzihasanovic in his testimony at The Hague.

The last census results, from 1991, counted 37,211 inhabitants in Srebrenica and the surrounding villages, of which 27,118 were Muslims (72.8 percent) and 9,381 Serbs (25.2 percent). Displaced persons from Srebrenica registered with the World Health Organization and Bosnian government in early August 1995 totaled 35,632. With 3,000 Muslim men who reached Tuzla “without their families being informed” we come to the figure of over 38,000 survivors. The Hague Tribunal’s own estimates of the total population of the Srebrenica enclave before July 1995—notably that made by Judge Patricia Wald—give 40,000 as the maximum figure. It simply does not add up to support the sanctified figure of “8,000.”.

Having spent five days interviewing over 20,000 Srebrenica survivors at Tuzla a week after the fall of the enclave, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Henry Wieland declared urbi et orbi, “we have not found anyone who saw with their own eyes an atrocity taking place.” A decade later a Dutch field investigator, Dr Dick Schoonoord, confirmed Wieland’s verdict: “It has been impossible during our investigations in Bosnia to find any people who witnessed the mass murder or would talk about the fate of the missing men.”

A “PROTECTED ZONE”?—It is often pointed out that Srebrenica was an UN “protected zone,” but it is seldom noted that the enclave was simultaneously an armed camp used for attacks against Serb villages in the surrounding areas. Muslim General Sefer Halilovic confirmed in his testimony at the Hague Tribunal that there were at least 5,500 Bosnian Muslim Army soldiers in Srebrenica after it had obtained the “safe haven” status, and that he had personally arranged numerous deliveries of sophisticated weapons by helicopter.

French General Philippe Morillon, the UNPROFOR commander who first called international attention to the Srebrenica enclave, was adamant that the crimes committed by those Muslim soldiers made the Serbs’ desire for revenge inevitable. He testified at The Hague Tribunal on February 12, 2004, that the Muslim commander in Srebrenica, Naser Oric, “engaged in attacks during Orthodox holidays and destroyed villages, massacring all the inhabitants. This created a degree of hatred that was quite extraordinary in the region.” Asked by the ICTY prosecutor how Oric treated his Serb prisoners, General Morillon, who knew him well, replied that “Naser Oric was a warlord who reigned by terror in his area and over the population itself… he didn’t even look for an excuse… One can’t be bothered with prisoners.”

Cees Wiebes, who wrote the intelligence section of the Dutch Government report on Srebrenica, has noted that despite signing the demilitarization agreement, Bosnian Muslim forces in Srebrenica were heavily armed and engaged in provocations (“sabotage operations”) against Serbian forces. Professor Wiebes caused a storm with his book Intelligence and the War in Bosnia 1992-1995, detailing the role of the Clinton administration in allowing Iran to arm the Bosnian Muslims.

On 11 July, 1995, the Muslim garrison was ordered to evacuate the town which the Serbs entered unopposed. Local Deputy Director of UN Monitors, Carlos Martins Branco, wrote in 2004 a hugely important study based on his experiences and additional documents (“Was Srebrenica a Hoax?”). Branco asserts that Muslim forces did not even try to take advantage of their heavy artillery because “military resistance would jeopardize the image of ‘victim,’ which had been so carefully constructed, and which the Muslims considered vital to maintain.” His findings have been ignored by the mainstream media and the Western political class.

POLITICAL BACKGROUND—Two prominent local supporters of the late Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic, his Srebrenica SDA party chairman Ibran Mustafic and police commander Hakija Meholjic, have subsequently accused Izetbegovic of deliberately sacrificing the enclave in order to trigger NATO intervention. Meholjic is explicit: in his presence, Izetbegovic quoted President Bill Clinton as saying that 5,000 dead Muslims would be sufficient to provide the political basis for an American-led intervention on the side of the Muslims.

Testifying at The Hague Tribunal, Muslim Generals Halilovic and Hadzihasanovic confirmed this theory by describing how 18 top officers of the Srebrenica garrison were abruptly removed in May 1995. Ibran Mustafic, the former head of the Muslim SDA party in Srebrenica, is adamant that the scenario for the sacrifice of Srebrenica was carefully prepared:

Unfortunately, the Bosnian presidency and the Army command were involved in this business … Had I received orders to attack the Serb army from the demilitarized zone, I would have rejected to carry out that order. I would have asked the person who had issued that order to bring his family to Srebrenica, so that I can give him a gun let him stage attacks from the demilitarized zone. I knew that such shameful, calculated moves were leading my people to catastrophe. The order came from Sarajevo.

Military analyst Tim Ripley agrees that Srebrenica was deliberately sacrificed by the Muslim political leaders for more lucrative purposes. He noted that Dutch UN soldiers “saw Bosnian troops escaping from Srebrenica past their observation points, carrying brand new anti-tank weapons [which] made many UN officers and international journalists suspicious.”

The term “genocide” is even more contentious than the exact circumstances of Srebrenica’s fall. Local chief of UN Monitors, Carlos Martins Branco, noted that if there had been a premeditated plan of genocide, instead of attacking in only one direction, from the south to the north—which left open escape routes to the north and west, the Serbs would have established a siege in order to ensure that no one escaped:

The UN observation posts to the north of the enclave were never disturbed and remained in activity after the end of the military operations. There are obviously mass graves in the outskirts of Srebrenica as in the rest of ex-Yugoslavia where combat has occurred, but there are no grounds for the campaign which was mounted, nor the numbers advanced by CNN. The mass graves are filled by a limited number of corpses from both sides, the consequence of heated battle and combat and not the result of a premeditated plan of genocide, as occurred against the Serbian populations in Krajina, in the Summer of 1995, when the Croatian army implemented the mass murder of all Serbians found there.

The fact that The Hague Tribunal called the massacre in Srebrenica “genocide” does not make it so. How can a “genocide” happen within a single municipality? What plan for genocide includes offering safe passage to women and children? And if this was all part of a Serb plot to eliminate Muslims, what about hundreds of thousands of Muslims living peacefully in Serbia itself, including thousands of refugees who fled there from Srebrenica and other parts of Bosnia? Or the Muslims in the neighboring enclave of Žepa, who were unharmed when the Serbs captured that town a few days after capturing Srebrenica?

To get around these common sense obstacles, the ICTY prosecution came up with a sociologist who provided an “expert” opinion: the Srebrenica Muslims lived in a patriarchal society, therefore killing the men was enough to ensure that the widows would not remarry and there would be no more young Muslims in Srebrenica. Such psychobabble turns the term “genocide” into a gruesome joke. Yet it was on the basis of this definition that in August 2001, the Tribunal found Bosnian Serb General Radislav Krstic guilty of “complicity in genocide.”

Even if the unproven figure of “8,000” is assumed, it affected less than one-half of one percent of Bosnia’s Muslim population in a locality covering one percent of its territory. On such form, the term “genocide” loses all meaning and becomes a propaganda tool rather than a legal and historical concept. On that form, America’s NATO ally Turkey – a major regional player in today’s Balkans – committed genocide in northern Cyprus in 1974. On that form, no military conflict can be genocide-free.

As Diana Johnstone explained in a seminal article a decade ago, the ‘Srebrenica massacre’ is part of a dominant culture discourse that is highly relevant to a host of U.S.-led or supported interventions in the Greater Middle East:

We people in the advanced democracies have reached a new moral plateau, from which we are both able and have a duty both to judge others and to impose our ‘values’ when necessary. The others, on a lower moral plateau, must be watched carefully, because unlike us, they may commit ‘genocide.’ … The subliminal message in the official Srebrenica discourse is that because ‘we’ let that happen, ‘we’ mustn’t let ‘it’ happen again, ergo, the U.S. should preventively bomb potential perpetrators of ‘genocide’.

The accepted Srebrenica story, influenced by war propaganda and uncritical media reports, is neither historically correct nor morally satisfying. The relentless 1990’s Western campaign against the Serbs and in favor of their Muslim foes—which is what “Srebrenica” is really all about—is detrimental to the survival of our culture and civilization. It seeks to give further credence to the myth of Muslim blameless victimhood, Christian “Islamophobic” viciousness, and alleged Western indifference. The myth is calculated to weaken our resolve in the global struggle once euphemistically known as “war on terrorism.” The former is a crime; the latter, a mistake.

]]>Picked Out A Coffin Yet? Take Ibuprofen And Diehttp://veracityvoice.com/?p=22066
2015-07-26T13:25:23Z

“Today we know that the risk of heart attack and stroke may occur early in treatment, even in the first weeks … “There is no period of use shown to be without risk,” says Judy Racoosin, M.D., M.P.H., deputy director of FDA’s Division of Anesthesia, Analgesia, and Addiction Products.”

In case you missed it: The FDA has just issued a warning on various prescription and non-prescription drugs that Americans ingest by the boatload. As it happens, these seemingly benign pain relievers can kill you even if you scrupulously follow the recommended dosage. But don’t take my word for it. Here’s a blurb from the FDA website:

“FDA is strengthening an existing warning in prescription drug labels and over-the-counter (OTC) Drug Facts labels to indicate that nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) can increase the chance of a heart attack or stroke, either of which can lead to death. Those serious side effects can occur as early as the first few weeks of using an NSAID, and the risk might rise the longer people take NSAIDs. (FDA Strengthens Warning of Heart Attack and Stroke Risk for Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs, FDA website)

Notice how the FDA refers to “death” as “a serious side effect.” How’s that for an understatement? Here’s more from the FDA warning:

“The OTC drugs in this group are used for the temporary relief of pain and fever. The prescription drugs in this group are used to treat several kinds of arthritis and other painful conditions. Because many prescription and OTC medicines contain NSAIDs, consumers should avoid taking multiple remedies with the same active ingredient.” The New York Times includes “Motrin IB, Aleve and Celebrex” in this group of “widely used painkillers “.

Why isn’t this headline news? People take tons of these chemicals everyday thinking they’ve been thoroughly tested and are totally safe. Now we find out that’s not the case. Now we discover that you can get a heart attack or stroke “as early as the first few weeks of using” them. Doesn’t that come as a bit of a shock to you, dear reader? Doesn’t that make you suspect that the FDA is not telling the whole truth here, but is simply covering up for a profit-obsessed industry that doesn’t give a rip about its customers health?

Take a look at some of these articles I dredged up on Google News on the topic:

And how reliable is FDA in determining the toxicity of these medications anyway? Wasn’t the so-called “watchdog” agency implicated in pay-to-play flap just a couple years ago? Some readers might recall another incident when the FDA was caught in a “spying program on its own scientists, lawmakers, reporters and academics” to “discourage whistleblowing.” According to Truthout’s Martha Rosenberg: “top FDA managers “committed the most outrageous misconduct by ordering, coercing and intimidating FDA physicians and scientists to recommend approval, and then retaliating when the physicians and scientists refused to go along.” Review procedures at the agency (which approves stents, breast implants, MRIs, and other devices and machinery) were so faulty that unsafe devices – including those that emit excessive radiation – were approved, charged the scientists, provoking an OSC investigation … For reporting the safety risks, the scientists became targets of the now-disclosed spy program and some lost their jobs. “…

(According to FDA drug reviewer Ronald Kavanagh) “While I was at FDA, drug reviewers were clearly told not to question drug companies and that our job was to approve drugs. We were prevented, except in rare instances, from presenting findings at advisory committees. In 2007, formal policies were instituted so that speaking in any way that could reflect poorly on the agency could result in termination. If we asked questions that could delay or prevent a drug’s approval – which of course was our job as drug reviewers – management would reprimand us, reassign us, hold secret meetings about us, and worse. Obviously in such an environment, people will self-censor.” (Former FDA Reviewer Speaks Out About Intimidation, Retaliation and Marginalizing of Safety, Martha Rosenberg, Truthout)

Nice, eh? And this is the agency that’s supposed to protect the public from risky drugs?

Right. Does the name “Vioxx” ring a bell? If not, here’s a little refresher from an article by Fred Gardener in Counterpunch titled “Merck Pays a Pittance for Mass Deaths”:

“Merck has agreed to pay $950 million and has pleaded guilty to a criminal charge over the marketing and sales of the painkiller Vioxx,” the New York Times reported Nov. 23 …

The FDA had initially approved Vioxx (after a hasty “priority review”) in May, 1999 to treat osteoarthritis, acute pain, and menstrual cramps. By September 30, 2004, when Merck announced its “voluntary recall,” some 25 million Americans had been prescribed the widely hyped drug. Evidence that using Vioxx doubled a patient’s risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke —based on a review of 1.4 million patients’ records— was about to be published in Lancet by David Graham, MD, an FDA investigator. The FDA director’s office, devoted valet of Big PhRMA, had contacted the Lancet in a futile effort to stop publication of their own scientist’s findings.

Graham’s data indicate that 140,000 Americans suffered Vioxx-induced heart attacks and strokes; 55,000 died, and many more were permanently disabled. The Merck executives’ real crime was conspiracy to commit murder … An early clinical trial had alerted them to the fact that Vioxx caused coronary damage. Their response was to exclude from future trials anyone with a history of heart trouble!

Once Vioxx was approved, Merck spent more than $100 million a year advertising it … Sales hit $2.5 billion in 2003. And when brave Dr. Graham first presented his irrefragable evidence to an FDA advisory committee in February 2004, Merck argued that the “unique benefits” of Vioxx warranted its remaining on the market. The FDA committee voted 17-15 to keep it available with a black box warning. Ten of the 32 committee members had taken money from Merck, Pfizer or Novartis (which were pushing drugs similar to Vioxx) as consultants. If these MDs had declared their conflicts of interest, Vioxx would have been pulled from the market by a vote of 14-8. By buying an extra seven and a half months, Merck made an extra billion or two, and killed 6,000 more Americans.

Worldwide, Vioxx was used by 80 million people. Assuming their dosages were similar to the 1.4 million Kaiser Permanente patients whose records Dr. Graham analyzed, the death toll exceeds 165,000.” (Merck Pays a Pittance for Mass Deaths, Fred Gardner, CounterPunch)

Is that what’s going on? Is some prestigious organization like Lancet about to release a damning report on these dubious pain relievers, so the FDA is trying to get ahead of the story to save their own kiester? How much has the culture at the FDA really changed since the Vioxx scandal? Is the agency still owned and operated by the industries its supposed to regulate?

Do you really need to ask? The better question would be: What regulatory agency in the U.S. ISN’T owned corporate America? They own it all; lock, stock and barrel.

I’m not saying these medications don,t help to relieve chronic pain from “debilitating conditions, including osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis?, gout and other rheumatological and painful conditions”. They do. But whether they’re useful or not doesn’t change the fact that “even small amounts” of this crap can put you at risk of a heart attack or stroke. That’s what the public needs to know, and that’s the FDA’s job. Here’s an excerpt from an article in the NYT that tries to minimize the dangers:

“The broader context is important. The relative risk of heart attack and stroke from the drugs is still far smaller than the risk from smoking, having uncontrolled high blood pressure or being obese.”

True, and it’s probably less risky that bungee-jumping off the Empire State Building, but what difference does that make. The fact is, it can kill you, the FDA KNOWS it can kill you, and yet they haven,t done anything to counter the relentless tsunami of industry generated propaganda that has convinced the American people that these medications are risk free. Here’s more on that from the Times:

“The agency said it would ask drug manufacturers to change the labels to reflect new evidence that the drugs increased the risk of heart attack and stroke soon after patients first started taking them, and that while the risk was higher for people with heart disease, it surfaced even for people who had never had heart problems.”

Let me get this straight: The FDA knows that these anti inflammatories are killing people and they’re going to “ask” the drug companies if they’ll change the labels? Is this how regulation works in the US nowadays; the agencies basically have to grovel before these cutthroat industries just to get them to do the right thing?

I have a better idea: Why not just prosecute a few of these drug-pushing executives for manslaughter?
That ought to do the trick, don’t you think?

“There is great concern that people think these drugs are benign, and they are probably not,” (said Dr. Peter Wilson, a professor of medicine and public health at Emory University in Atlanta) “The thought is these are good for short-term relief, probably for your younger person with no history of cardiovascular trouble.”

There it is from the horses mouth. Do not presume that these medications are safe just because they’re hyped in the media. Do your own research and decide for yourself whether the benefits outweigh the risks.

]]>Donald Trump Is Right About John McCainhttp://veracityvoice.com/?p=22062
2015-07-25T13:22:52Z

Maverick Republican, Donald Trump, has been under intense pressure from the GOP establishment for his off-the-cuff remark about Senator John McCain (R-Arizona). In a televised interview, Trump said, “[John McCain] is a hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

Predictably, establishment Republicans immediately called Trump just about every dirty name in the book. Lindsey Graham called him a “jackass.” Rick Perry said the comment made him “unfit” to be President. Mitt Romney said Trump “shot himself down.” (Not hardly! Trump is the clear front runner of all the GOP presidential candidates in most polls.) But, clearly, the Republican establishment is frustrated with Trump’s popularity–and for good reason.

Donald Trump is scorching the GOP for its support of illegal immigration, and he is scorching it for its support of incessant foreign wars. Trump said, “We spent $2 trillion in Iraq, $2 trillion. We lost thousands of lives, thousands in Iraq. We have wounded soldiers all over the place, thousands and thousands of wounded soldiers. And we have nothing. We can’t even go there. We have nothing. And every time we give Iraq equipment, the first time a bullet goes off in the air, they leave it.” Amen!

And he is scorching them BIG TIME by calling into question the GOP’s 2008 standard bearer. Specifically, he has dared to tell the truth about the miserable record of John McCain’s treatment of America’s veterans.

In refusing to apologize for his remarks about Senator McCain, Trump rightly said, “The reality is that John McCain the politician has made America less safe, sent our brave soldiers into wrong-headed foreign adventures, covered up for President Obama with the VA scandal and has spent most of his time in the Senate pushing amnesty. He would rather protect the Iraqi border than Arizona’s.”

While most everyone has criticized the second part of Trump’s statement (“I like people who weren’t captured”), hardly anyone has dared to broach the first part of the statement: “[John McCain] is a hero because he was captured.” That statement is an absolute fact.

John McCain rose to become one of America’s most powerful senators and became the Republican Party’s nominee for President in 2008 mostly on his Prisoner of War (POW) status. Absent his POW history, McCain would no doubt have lived his entire life in relative obscurity. It usually takes more than simply being a veteran or being the son of a Navy admiral or even being a POW to make one obtain famous hero status. How many other POWs do you know that have achieved McCain’s political power and influence?

Alabama’s Jeremiah Denton was a POW who truly endured intense torture at the hands of the enemy and who became one of our finest U.S. senators. And there was never the first hint of dishonorable conduct or scandal or accusations that Denton used his war record for personal profit. I had the privilege of meeting Senator Denton a couple of times, and the thing that struck me most about the man was his deep and genuine humility. The same cannot be said of John McCain.

John McCain’s POW record has been shrouded in controversy from the very beginning. Many independent journalists and military veterans have accused McCain of being America’s version of “Tokyo Rose.” They offer convincing evidence (or at least credible postulations) that McCain was NEVER tortured, that he received special treatment by his captors, and that he actually willingly participated in anti-America propaganda, in much the same way that Tokyo Rose did in the Pacific during World War II.

One Vietnam veteran who was publicly critical of John McCain was my friend Jack McLamb. McLamb served nine years in secret operations in Cambodia and other nations before going on to become one of the most highly decorated police officers in Phoenix, Arizona history, winning Police Officer of the Year twice before taking a role as a hostage negotiator for the FBI.

McLamb said of McCain, “I know a lot of Vietnam veterans and a few POW’s and all the POW’s that I’ve talked to over the years say that John McCain is a lying skunk.

“He never was tortured–they were there in the camp with him and then when he came in….he immediately started spilling his guts about everything because he didn’t want to get tortured,” said McLamb, contradicting the official story that McCain only offered his name, rank, serial number, and date of birth.

“The Vietnamese Communists called him the Songbird, that’s his code name, Songbird McCain, because he just came into the camp singing and telling them everything they wanted to know.”

McLamb also said, “The POW’s said that McCain made 32 propaganda videos for the communist North Vietnamese in which he denounced America for what they were doing in Vietnam.

“They have these sealed now, our government has these sealed, we can’t get to it, they have it classified. In truth the POW’s hate John McCain.”

Reports note that former American POWs such as Col. Ted Guy and Gordon “Swede” Larson, who were held in the same communist prison as McCain, have gone on record saying that they are very skeptical about McCain’s claims of torture.

Another former POW, Philip Butler, a man who was also imprisoned with McCain, is more sympathetic to the man, saying that he had probably been tortured early on in his captivity and made no reference to McCain’s alleged anti-America propaganda charges–but was emphatic that McCain was unqualified to be President. Butler firmly said that he would NOT vote for McCain because McCain was a hot-tempered man who had become a Bush-like warmonger and who had used his POW status for personal and political gain. Remember, this is from a fellow POW who actually likes McCain.

Regardless of McCain’s real war record (the U.S. government has sealed the record, so we will likely never know the truth about the matter), it is a fact that, as one of the most powerful senators in Washington, D.C., John McCain has done little to assist America’s veterans. In fact, McCain is commonly regarded as being one of the strongest opponents to the investigation and rescue of POWs left behind in Indochina following the Vietnam War.

While a member of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs (1991-1993), McCain referred to POW/MIA family members and activists as “whiners,” “vultures,” and “the lunatic fringe.” Although the committee concluded that there were indeed American POWs left behind in Indochina, McCain voted to normalize relations with Vietnam without any accountability for America’s missing servicemen. In so doing, McCain ignored a letter written by fellow POW Captain Eugene “Red” McDaniel and co-signed by 50 former POWs which asked him to not support normalized relations with Vietnam until the POW issue had been resolved.

In 1996, McCain opposed the Missing Service Personnel Act (MSPA) as being “unnecessary” and “burdensome.” He also helped to amend the MSPA to remove criminal liability, which POW/MIA families knew was a serious blow to obtaining meaningful accountability on behalf their loved ones still languishing in Southeast Asia.

John McCain has spent most of his senatorial career promoting an open border with Mexico, a path to citizenship for illegal aliens, and incessant foreign wars; facilitating the miserable performance of the Department of Veteran’s Affairs (VA); and covering up evidence of Americans left behind in Indochina. No wonder so many people have referred to McCain as “The Manchurian Candidate.”

By telling the truth about John McCain, Donald Trump has hit the rawest of nerves within the Washington establishment (and New World Order globalist elite). Without a doubt, John McCain is one of the globalist elite’s political darlings. A favored son of globalist puppet-masters such as Henry Kissinger, John McCain has been a water boy for the New World Order from the time he entered politics. Guilty of corruption as one of the infamous “Keating Five,” John McCain was given a mere “slap-on-the-wrist” and allowed to continue his pernicious ways.

And McCain’s “war hero” status has made him virtually untouchable–until now.

My mind is far from made up in regards to supporting Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy. But, so far, Donald Trump has been willing to courageously confront the Washington establishment in an in-your-face, no-holds-barred manner that we have not seen in a long, long time. And if Trump accomplishes nothing else in his presidential bid except exposing establishment sycophants like John McCain, I, for one, am excited that he has entered the race.

]]>The Battle of the Ages: Defeating A Spineless Generationhttp://veracityvoice.com/?p=22059
2015-07-25T13:15:18Z

The results of mixing government and religion so terrified the men who crafted the United States Constitution that they created a document allowing the forces of evil to enter with ease; among these men were power hungry elitists who sought a powerful state. The result was a government of the people by the people and for the people, complete with checks and balances; but the door to manipulation of the people was left unlocked.

President Andrew Jackson succeeded in stalling the usury mongers and their Second National Bank for several decades. But the avaricious Bramble men (Judges 9:8-15) returned and found enough traitorous enemies of freedom in high places to steal control. Policies that were already aggressive and belligerent now strayed into an arena that was clearly inimical to the interests of the United States.

WWI and WWII dragged us into European conflicts where we had no vested interest. Unfortunately our citizens never understood that hidden forces were controlling our nation pushing it into illegitimate conflicts that were costly and murderous.

Behind this bloodthirsty mass murder was a quest for world government. Following WWI the League of Nations was paraded out for American approval. It was rejected. The Bramble men, noted for being stiff necked, soon maneuvered hapless Americans into another European war and following WWII the push for a United Nations enamored enough avaricious politicians to get the United States involved in the U. N.’s sovereignty-robbing centralization.

The assault on the United States progressed slowly during the latter half of the Twentieth Century. It involved draining wealth from the United States and transferring it to third world nations. This was accomplished by bribing congress to pass trade legislation that damaged American businesses and American workers. Costly mendacious propaganda programs accompanied these bills and by the beginning of the Twenty- First Century millions of high paying manufacturing jobs had been moved overseas, many of them to Japan and China; it was one of the largest transfers of wealth in the history of the world.

As despotic free trade agreements forced American workers into competition with Chinese workers (who entered the world market at $.25 an hour) high paying jobs migrated overseas like migrant birds flying south for the winter. A higher standard of living in the U. S. made it impossible for our workers to compete. We were told that our economy would become a service economy and that we needed to educate our people to work in high tech industries.

As the high tech industry boomed, labor intensive parts were moved overseas and instead of producing wealth for Americans they added to the success of foreign manufacturers. The United States became a debt producing, consumer entity no longer creating tangible wealth. The futility of trying to create high paying jobs in an alien marketplace was glaringly apparent.

The Twenty-First Century has seen a more vigorous push to bring a reluctant America into a new world order. Under the Obama Administration Congress passed The Trans-Pacific Partnership which was touted as a trade friendly, wealth producing bill that would benefit American workers. The bill was fast tracked through congress where our treasonous elected representatives voted for it without reading or understood its contents. It will add to the plundering of the U. S. economy.

The gross inefficiency involved in shipping goods across the Pacific Ocean and trucking them around the United States is another of the many dissonances in the tyrannical agenda of the Bramble men. We are constantly regaled with the need to conserve energy while the economic order being imposed consumes more than any nation could possibly save.

The final results of the injurious trade agreements have not yet been fully realized. American workers will not become productive until the standard of living reaches parity with the lowest wage nations of the world. That will take time; wages in the U. S. will go down and wages in Asia will rise. As parity is realized the flow of immigration into the United States will diminish and a semblance of stability will be realized. As a poorer and less powerful nation Americans will work for lower wages and live without the luxuries they formerly enjoyed. In the meantime the remaining wealth accumulated by the older, retired generation will be slowly siphoned off to higher taxes and inflation.

Signs of the new economy can be seen in shopping malls where stores are beginning to close leaving empty spaces that will remain unrented. These unrented units are a result of a declining standard of living. As this decline continues America’s market will shrink and nations that depend on exports into it will suffer a serious drop in revenue. The U.S. market has been the engine of economic progression for third world nations; their standard of living has risen as the U. S. standard declined.

Efforts to conquer and enslave the world’s population are not new. History is replete with empires that have had various amounts of success. However, there has never before been a technology that would allow the amount of individual control that is now in the hands of the Bramble men nor have the people of the world ever been more self-absorbed and less aware of the danger.

During the past few decades United States has seen an astounding deterioration in public moral standards and a brazen willingness of our courts to erode existing concepts of righteousness. The two party system has been compromised almost from the inception of the nation. Government of the people, by the people, and for the people is an idea that placates the masses but in reality has failed to sustain freedom.

The Bramble men who own and control our press and media are currently busy obliterating the Confederate flag. When they activate their massive propaganda machine it soon creates enough support for an array of evil agendas to cause serious conflicts in our society. They have supported abortion, feminism, homosexuality, open borders, restrictions on speech, Black militancy, special rights, social immorality, pornography, anti-Christianity, open borders and more.

The Bramble men seek historic revisionism as an additional means of destroying our Nation. As I write this essay there is very little left of the free and righteous nation in which I grew up. The Bramble men have succeeded in destroying our Constitution, our religion, our culture, our morality, our compassion, our money, our educational system, our food supply, our reputation and more.

While our insouciant citizens wallow in the mud of evil, the inexorable demolition of our nation continues. They watch as the Bramble men select and properly endow the 2016 presidential candidates and line up to support one or the other of which will continue to ruin what used to be a free and prosperous nation. It is a charade that has gone on for decades and will undoubtedly continue.

In “Our Threatened Freedom” R. J. Rushdoony writes, “If a civil government is a terror not to evildoers, but to the law abiding, then it has lost its main reason for existence. Such a civil government has then become a self-serving power. It collects taxes to support itself, grow bigger and richer, and to increase its power and control over us.” Pg. 236

America has become a large plantation where citizens work while the Bramble men skim the monetary cream from the operation leaving citizens, whose ancestors founded and built the nation, poor and disenfranchised. It is a money energized rape that few of the victims recognize.

We are in the midst of the Battle of the Ages; a battle against “good” and “evil” – a war between the One True God and the Devil. Few of our citizens know or care about the conflict. Our churches have become useless, humanistic entertainment centers chosen by their parishioners as one would choose a good movie. Propaganda is pandemic. We live in a sea of lies that distort reality and create a make believe world.

Humanists quickly lose their ability to discern truth and begin to avoid and denigrate those that tell them. Elizabeth White, a Seventh Day Adventist writer, describes it this way: “Satan is seeking to deceive men and lead them to call sin righteousness, and righteousness sin. How successful has been his world! How often censure and reproof are cast upon God’s faithful servants because they will stand fearlessly in defense of the truth! Men who are but agents of Satan are praised and flattered, and even looked upon as martyrs, while those who should be respected and sustained for their fidelity to God, are left to stand alone, under suspicion and distrust.” The Great Controversy, Pg. 98

Gay marriage defies God, It defies reason, and it defies nature. It accurately represents the insanity that grips the evil Bramble men that American citizens have helped to acquire powerful positions in God’s creation. The Bible burners are on the precipice with their torches aflame. They will try again to destroy the Word of God, but they will not succeed for the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will not allow it. Out of this dark time will come a new and vital righteousness that will bring a different new world order built on the peace and prosperity of God’s immutable Law

”The question is: By adhering to its highest principles and ideals, will America continue to have the moral authority to lead all people of goodwill? The answer remains to be seen. And that answer will have much to do with whether we have the courage to drive the money changers from the temple of democracy and recapture government of the people, for the people, and by the people”. Gary Hart

The world is out of control. Well, that seems to be the reaction to the populist. However, for the New World Order, all systems are a go and the ability to manipulate governments is vivid evidence that a global authoritarian force is the actual ruler over the planet. Most people deny this assessment and are fearful to come to grips with the significance that nations no longer matter. The path to domination by Luciferian Technocrats Rule the New World Order is the operative principle underlying social cultures, international affairs and economic activities.

The historic organizational structure of the nation state is in serious decline and verges on extinction in many places. The facade on a map or a vote in a plebiscite exemplifies the lack of real power flowing from the will of the people. Chalk up another casualty in the war against self-determination.

“What must be understood is that creditors are not necessarily strung on outright reimbursement of sovereign debt. Quite the opposite. Their objective is to make the debt go up through so-called debt rescheduling, which essentially allows them to lend more money to the debtor. This new money then facilitates the process of debt servicing. “We will lend you the money and with the money we lend you, you will pay us back.” New loans to pay back old debts.

This procedure has been routinely applied as part of the IMF-World Bank structural adjustment program (SAP) for more than thirty years. The debt burden goes up. The country is increasingly in a straightjacket. The creditors call the shots on macro-economic reform.”

“The Greek PM has this morning defended last night’s basis for an agreement, arguing that he managed to resist measures that would have led to a collapse of the banking system.”

Note that the objective for the preservation of the banking system was not concerned with keeping Greece functioning, but to guarding the bulwarks of the Rothschild world of a central banking system. This same game plays out in every corner and crack of finance, but now the focus has shifted to commandeer the sovereign debt obligations of every bankrupt regime in trouble.

When debt created money is created as an accounting entry in the ledgers of a lending banking institution, the risk of recovering future interest payments evaporate since new money will simply be made available for the ubiquitous roll over.

This scheme should be well understood. Nonetheless, the consensus of establishment administrators and gatekeepers ignore or outright deny that the formula for compliance far surpasses lawyerly contracts and pledged collateral.

The basis for a proper understanding of the NWO is to gain the insight that the entire planet operates under the demands and threats streaming out of a Nefarious Warrior Organism.

A state of permanent war is indispensible for global conquest. Applying conditions and instances of instability is essential to force a chaotic volatility upon factions that resist the monocracy of planetary dominance.

Keep the countries in the neo-colonial system docile or instill a perpetual bedlam that destabilizes the very core of the society.

The price for an armistice is defined by the IMF and World Bank. Stripe the assets of the disgruntled masses and requires homage to accompany the repayment funds as the price for temporary relief.

The malicious nature of greater imposed governance, adopts all the brutal properties of an evolving tyrannical mechanism. The trend escalates to inflict higher levels of intrusion, demands and severe penalties for non-compliance.

Examining the organic evolution of the Nefarious Warrior Organism may seem futile since the actual results of this anti-human structure are so obvious for any thinking person to see. However, dismissing the evil character of the New World Order provides ample fuel to spread and grow the reach of the monster.

If resisting evil is not part of your own ethical universe, there is no hope for your salvation. One of the most destructive characteristics of a failed society is the rejection of time honored moral commandments.

Now a commandment is often associated with the Mosaic Law in Exodus 20:1-17, and then at Deuteronomy 5:4-21. Yet, one need not be a believer to comprehend that any commandment, civil or spiritual is based upon some authority.

Within the annals of Western Civilization, usually a Caesar or a Church claimed the authority to define the rules. Now this model of organization is being eliminated in a methodical process of de-constructing traditional human culture. Society is degrading into a global gulag based upon debasing the sacred nature of life itself.

Agents for the Nefarious Warrior Organism will employ any means useful to the further disintegration of independent and individual autonomy. Since this assault on basic humanity has a villainous record, it would be valuable to review The Mattoid Syndrome by Archibald E. Roberts.

This argument and supporting evidence has been made available for decades. However, few are willing or bold enough to confront the global tyrants. The giant leap from a focus on blaming your own government for the decline in social standards and a descent into economic oblivion keeps the discussion confined to class warfare, divide and conquer and political diversion.

The stigma of mass media demonization and smears of being a being labeled a conspiracy theorist, has weak minded and cowards clinging to their muse of justifying their apathy.

“By the same token, a civil magistrate has authority in civil matters, but his authority is limited and defined. Observe that Romans Chapter 13 clearly limits the authority of civil government by strictly defining its purpose: “For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil . . . For he is the minister of God to thee for good . . . for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.”

Notice that civil government must not be a “terror to good works.” It has no power or authority to terrorize good works or good people. God never gave it that authority. And any government that oversteps that divine boundary has no divine authority or protection.

Civil government is a “minister of God to thee for good.” It is a not a minister of God for evil. Civil magistrates have a divine duty to “execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.” They have no authority to execute wrath upon him that doeth good. None. Zilch. Zero. And anyone who says they do is lying.”

Now expand this view of limited civil authority as a restrain on any particular government and seek a proper understanding that the very concept of a global governance conflicts with the reality that supreme authority is embodied in divine providence.

Obedience to NWO governance intended to end national sovereignty and dehumanize individuals is the ultimate transgression.

Multiply all the crazed Agenda 21 initiatives, fabricated foreign involvements, international governance and top down control of global affairs is demonic in its essence.

Those who have doubts that God will intercede to defeat the juggernaut of world diabolic slavery should pause and reflect by what other power is possible to defeat the Nefarious Warrior Organism?

History is replete of caustic empire madmen. What is different today is that the planet is consolidating competing blocs under the configuration of a universal despotism.

Actual dissent is in short supply from institutions, politicians and corporations. The system is closer to total mastery because most individuals will just accept their enslavement in the normal course of living their lives.

Regrettably, such people have done little to gain respect from their fellow man.

Politics is inescapable, yet most “citizens of the world” lack the fortitude to become heroes to humanity. With the EU bailout of Greece, the 300 Spartans died at Thermopylae in vain. The Nefarious Warrior Organism won this battle and the prospects for Western society has devolved into the depths of Hades.

The face of the devil wears a designer bankster suit. Start the countdown, the path to the Apocalypse has just moved closer. The necessary moral response is total resistance.

Sartre is the publisher, editor, and writer for Breaking All The Rules. He can be reached at: BATR
Sartre is a regular columnist for Veracity Voice

]]>An Open Letter To My Fellow Pastors And Christianshttp://veracityvoice.com/?p=22053
2015-07-19T13:11:47Z

I was born and raised in a Christian home. I accepted Christ as my Savior at the age of five. I surrendered to the Gospel ministry at the age of eighteen. I attended or have diplomas and degrees from four Bible colleges. I started pastoring when I was twenty-three years of age. And I just observed my fortieth year of continuous pastoral ministry. As Paul said to his son in the faith, Timothy, so I can say, “And that from a child [I have] known the holy scriptures.” (II Tim. 3:15)

Obviously, I am no stranger to the work of God. I have been in church all of my life. Though my dad was not a full-time minister (even though he was ordained), his best friends were pastors. As a result, I have been around pastors and Christian workers all of my life. So, I am not speaking as an outsider. I know church work from the inside out. I’ve seen it; I’ve been taught it; and I’ve experienced it. The good, the bad, and the ugly: I’ve seen it all.

We pastors and Christians are never going to agree on every nuance of scriptural interpretation or method of ministry. But the vast majority of us will agree that Christ alone is our Sovereign and the Bible is the rule for our faith and practice.

SO, WHAT WILL WE DO NOW?

Caesar has demanded that we recognize the legal “right” of homosexuals and lesbians to “marry.” It will not be long before each and every one of us pastors and ministers will, first, be ASKED to “marry” same-sex couples, and, then, be REQUIRED to “marry” same-sex couples.

WHAT WILL WE DO?

Some pastors are waiting to hear from their denominational superiors for instructions. Some are, no doubt, trying to keep quiet about the subject and hope they can somehow avoid dealing with it. Some are now counseling with attorneys for guidance. But, in truth, our guidance and instruction do not come from denominational officers or lawyers; and it is a cold, hard fact that there is NO avoiding the issue. Sooner or later (probably sooner), each of us will have to make a conscientious decision that is based solely on our moral and scriptural convictions.

AGAIN, WHAT WILL WE DO?

For the most part, our pulpits were silent when the freedom of religion and conscience became a matter of state licensure in 1954 when churches were included in the Internal Revenue Code, section 501c3, as mere non-profit organizations. For the most part, our pulpits were silent when the freedom to pray and read the Bible was removed from our public schools in 1962 and ’63. For the most part, our pulpits were silent when the freedom of God-ordained self-defense became a state-sanctioned license and privilege in 1968. For the most part, our pulpits were silent when the God-ordained right to life of unborn babies was expunged in 1973. For the most part, our pulpits have been silent as our Natural rights of privacy and local autonomy began being stripped from us in 2001. And, now, the most important institution in human history, Holy Matrimony, has been “redefined” by Caesar’s court.

Will we pastors remain silent? Will we sheepishly submit to this egregious and tyrannical assault against the most fundamental institution created by God? Will we become willing accomplices to the formalization of egregiously unnatural perversion?

WHAT WILL WE DO?

Can we not see that what is at stake is the preservation of religious liberty and Christian conscience in our land? Radical secularists (and even some anti-Christian religionists) desire to expunge every semblance of Christian thought and ideology from our nation. The purge has already begun.

All over America, lawsuits against pastors who refuse to marry same-sex couples have already been filed. The same is true for Christians in various service industries that refuse to cater to homosexual “marriages.” Militant homosexuals have brought a $70 million lawsuit against the two largest publishers of the Bible (Zondervan and Tyndale), demanding that the Scriptures condemning sodomy be eviscerated.

It will not be long and cultural Marxists will see to it that the homosexual lifestyle will be promoted in every conceivable public venue. Movies, television (even children’s programs), books, music, magazines, etc., will openly promote the sodomite lifestyle. Common Core curriculum will certainly advocate for homosexual conduct in America’s public schools. Homosexuals will demand the right to flaunt their romantic proclivities in public. Restaurants, concert houses, theaters, meeting places, even churches, will be sued if they do not allow homosexuals to openly display their perversity. Again, this is already beginning.

And for pastors and churches specifically, the big intimidation factor is the IRS tax-exempt status. Already, some of the largest and most notable newspapers, periodicals, and newscasts are calling for the removal of tax-exempt churches that refuse to “marry” same-sex couples. Some are even calling for the removal of tax-exempt status of ALL churches.

If the “great recession” of 2008 and ’09 was the natural “correction” of a manipulated economic “bubble,” I submit that the Hodges decision is the natural (or maybe divine) correction of a manipulated spiritual bubble. For over a half-century, churches have been intoxicated with “success.” The Joel Osteen-brand of Christianity has obfuscated the true purpose of the church. Pleasing Caesar and maintaining tax-exempt status (at all costs) have supplanted pleasing God and maintaining Biblical status. The result is a church that is “increased with goods” but that is spiritually “wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.” (Rev. 3:17)

In reality, the Hodges Supreme Court decision was inevitable. It was the result of the spiritually polygamous marriage between the church and state in 1954. It was the result of a church that, like the Jewish Pharisees of old, said, “We have no king but Caesar,” while pretending to be married to Christ.

Well, now God has forced his pastors and churches to take a stand. There is no beating around the bush anymore. There is no avoiding the issue. Pastors and churches will either submit to Christ or they will submit to Caesar. There is no middle ground. There is no more fence-straddling.

Again, the root cause of all of this is the church’s acceptance of state licensure, and, therefore, state authority. Churches committed spiritual adultery when they allowed themselves to take the 501c3 wedding band. By doing so, they became “creatures of the state” and ceased to be the “bride” of Christ. And, remember, our God is a jealous God. “For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.” (Exodus 34:14)

Since the state has decided to repudiate the Natural authority of marriage as given by our Creator, it behooves us, as Christian ministers, to repudiate state authority over marriage. That means we should immediately cease and desist from officiating over any marriage, heterosexual or homosexual, that includes a license from the state. That is exactly what I will do.

In terms of the history of the Church, as well as Western Civilization, state-licensure of marriages is very recent. For over 1,800 years, almost no marriages (if any) required state-licensure. A certificate of marriage or declaration of marriage or church approbation–or other such recognition–was all that was needed. I don’t know about all of the 50 states, of course, but in my home State of Montana, marriages do NOT require a State license. And that’s exactly the way it should be.

WHAT ABOUT IT, PREACHER? WHAT WILL YOU DO?

Is a state-created tax-exempt license more important than fidelity to Christ and the Scriptures? Let me speak plainly: so what if we lose our tax-exempt status?

I hear my brethren exclaim, “But, Brother Chuck, we will lose tithing members. If they cannot claim their contributions on their tax forms, they will stop giving to the church.” My response is: SO BE IT.

Our churches are filled with careless, insincere, half-hearted Christians. God promised to separate the sheep from the goats and the wheat from the chaff; I believe He is doing just that in the United States right now. America’s churches have been living in a manipulated spiritual “bubble.” The bubble is bursting. It’s long overdue.

Churches in oppressed countries around the world are not worrying about some kind of tax-exempt status. They are not creatures of the state. Many of them are not even recognized as being legal in their states. Many of them are “unofficial,” “unregistered,” “unlawful,” etc. But they are true to Christ and His Word–and their numbers are flourishing.

In just a few years, there will be more Christians in Communist China than in so-called “Christian” America–a first since America came into existence. And there is no tax-exempt status afforded them. At the same time here in America, Christianity is in steep decline. What’s the difference? In China, churches do not seek, nor will they accept, state recognition and endorsement, while here in America churches enthusiastically embrace state recognition and endorsement (licensure).

It’s time we find out who is real and who isn’t.

And a question for those church members out there: What are you going to do if your pastor agrees to marry same-sex couples? If your pastor will not take a stand on this, he won’t take a stand on ANYTHING. And, if he hasn’t said anything from the pulpit already, why are you still there?

Are you not willing to give your tithes and offerings to a church even if those financial gifts are NOT tax deductible? If not, what is your real motivation for giving to begin with? Are you not willing to sit under the preaching of a courageous man of God who is the servant of God and not the servant of men–even men in government? If not, why are you even attending church?

Christians have been flocking to these “feel-good” churches for decades. They continued to support spineless pastors, who refused to take a stand for the God-ordained duty of self-defense; who refused to take a stand against the killing of unborn babies; who refused to speak out for religious liberty; and who are currently refusing to take a stand against an Orwellian Police State being created in front of our very eyes. Will they now continue to stay inside those churches whose pastors refuse to take a stand for God-ordained marriage?

I submit that either the Church in America repents and does the “first works” or it will quickly lose its “candlestick.” Truly, “the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God.” (I Peter 4:17)